Nine Years
by MeredithBrody
Summary: A lot has changed in Meredith Brody's life, but who she turns to when she needs support is always the same. (Prody)


**So, another year has passed and another memorial oneshot from the Shin. As always, this is dedicated to my friend Sophie Lancaster. It's been 9 years since the angels called you in, and we still miss you every day. As always, please read and review.  
Shin xx**

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Merri had been settling in to her new job, but tonight she didn't want to be on her own. At the same time though, she didn't want to be with her new colleagues. People who didn't know who she really was. It meant that she decided to make the trip across the city to be with someone who really did know her and her history. Stepping in the door she was glad it wasn't locked up, and hoped that that person she seeked was there. "We're closed." She heard, and broke into another smile.

"It's me." She called out, stepping further in and seeing him putting the last two chairs on a table while she was stepping in. "I hoped you'd be closing up, not Buckley." She grinned as King finally looked up at her, and his face broke into a bigger smile. They hadn't actually seen each other since her last day at NCIS, but they had spoken on the phone or text every day.

"Merri." He grinned and clearly as he looked up he knew something was bothering her. He stopped and watched her, and Merri just kept standing there and shook her head softly. He dropped the dishcloth to the table he was stood beside and stepped closer. "What's wrong?" King's voice was soft, and that made Merri feel a little safer.

"It's… 9 years." She said those words quietly, her voice wavered at the end even though she'd almost begged herself to stay level. It was so strange that she actually wanted to talk about Emily with someone. For so many years she'd never wanted to share Emily with anyone, but today, with King, it seemed like the right time.

"Emily?" He asked, looking as though he already knew that he was right. Really there was nothing else it could have been. Nothing that would have had her travelling across the city to be with someone. "Come here." He held his arms open and Merri found herself rushing into them eagerly, holding on to the back of his t-shirt as he wrapped her up into his arms and held her close.

"I couldn't be alone tonight." She ended up whispering a few moments later, she just hadn't been able to face that whole situation. Going home to an empty house after spending a day with people she still wasn't sure liked her was not her idea of the perfect memorial for Emily.

"You don't have to be." King replied quietly, his hand gently rubbing up and down her back supportively. She took a few deep breaths, trying to let the feeling of home wash over her. The feeling that she was where she needed to be. She'd thought it was NCIS before, but she was learning quickly that it was actually Pride. "I'm right here." That made her feel better than she would have thought, and gave her the safety to think about Emily.

"I can't believe it's been so long." She said honestly, and she really couldn't. Some days it seemed like it had only been yesterday she'd been on the _Moultrie_ going through her case notes when she was called to the XO's office. She'd then had the worst phone call of her life with her mother, that Emily had been in an accident. That Emily had died.

"I'm with you, I got you." King kept repeating quietly as he held her tightly to him. She had needed this support more than she'd cared to admit, and she didn't want him to let go of her, she needed him to stay right there with her.

"Don't leave me alone tonight, please?" She was about ready to beg him if that became necessary. She didn't think for a moment that it actually would be, but she was prepared to do just that.

"Not a chance." He muttered then kissed her temple softly. Merri just grabbed onto him tighter when he did that. Holding him to her chest not wanting to let him go at all. After another minute though she knew they needed to move on. "Come on, I'll walk you home, I was already done here."

"Thanks." She said again, watching him step away for a moment to grab his keys and shut the lights down, then he came straight back to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulders again, guiding her out the door then falling in to step together. She wrapped her arm around his waist to match his.

They walked for a while, just getting away from the office in the direction of Merri's home, somewhere they'd both been together a lot while he was trying to convince her not to leave their team. this was very different. As they walked he held her close, and after a short time the question she had once always dreaded came up. "Tell me about Emily."

"What do you want to know?" Merri was really buying herself time, even though she genuinely did want to tell King about her sister, she was so used to deflecting that question that she couldn't imagine not dodging at least once, though she doubted it would stay that way. he wouldn't let her avoid it for long.

"Everything." That one word opened a floodgate that Merri hadn't even realised was on the verge of crashing down. She had apparently needed to talk about Emily and their lives more than she'd realised. she just wanted to get Emily out, and she wasn't used to that.

"She was… she was amazing Dwayne. We were two halves of a whole and I'm always gonna feel like I'm missing something with her gone." Merri had already explained it to him before as being like a hole in her heart, but that was kind of an understatement. It was like a part of her soul had disappeared that day. "Nobody believes it, but I was the shy twin. She was so outgoing she always brought me out of my shell." Emily had hated to see Merri hiding away, so she'd never let her stay in the shadows for long.

"I can see that, I've seen you at parties, whenever we're all together. You're always the quiet one." King commented, and Merri looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Nobody ever realised that, they always assumed she was in the middle of it, because she liked to talk. Not realising that really she was more off to the side listening.

"She was so happy when she met Daniel, we were still in college and they were on the same major." Merri could still remember the day that Emily had met Daniel Nolan. How excited she'd been that this cute guy had been as interested in her as she was in him.

"They were always together?" King asked, and Merri knew he meant from then on. The one thing that had always made her happy was exactly how long Daniel had seemed to be able to manage with Emily. The Brody twins weren't easy to deal with at the best of times, in a relationship they were hard.

"Yeah. They introduced me to James too." Merri smiled a little through the tears as she thought of her ex-fiance. Even though their relationship had finally officially had time called on it, he was still her best friend and he was worried about her. "He text me this morning to make sure I was doing OK, but it's not the same as having someone here."

"You miss him?" King asked, clearly thinking that Merri wouldn't be talking about James if she didn't want him there. While in some ways it would have been easier for her to have James here, if only because they'd both known Emily, it was better for them to be apart.

"Yes and no. We decided to stay just friends, neither of us can really manage the long distance anymore. We're both older than that." That wasn't the only reason. They were both much more interested in their careers, they couldn't dedicate the time they needed to one another.

"You want more now?" King asked, more perceptive to her unspoken thoughts than maybe she would have normally given to him. She normally wouldn't have let him get to know her well enough to know any of this though, so in a way she was proud of herself for letting him in so far.

"I do. Remember how you and Loretta… both told me I needed to get on with my life?" Both her older and wiser friends had been really pushing that, and they'd been right. It had taken Russo for her to see that though. "That was one of the ways I needed to do that. I needed to stop cling on to James as a connection to my past, and look more toward the future."

"With someone else?" Another question, and this one made King seem more hopeful. She wondered now if he was maybe thinking the same as her, that there was someone close by who could be the person that she so desperately needed.

Deciding to test the water instead of waiting for it to come to him admitting what he was thinking. She thought of a way to imply what she was thinking without making it completely obvious. "Someone a lot closer to me than Europe."

"How much closer?" She spotted him licking his lip from the corner of her eye and she wondered what that meant. Maybe she needed to stop trying to read into it all and just accept it all as it came.

"As close as you can get." She smiled and looked at him, pulling him to a stop where they were. They were nearly at her place, but for a second she wanted to be able to see Pride's face while she spoke. "I need to let Emily go. I'm always going to miss her, I'm always going to love her. But she'd honestly kick my ass for waiting this long to move on."

"You got justice for her, Merri." King reminded her, and that was something that Merri was never going to be able to forget. Her team and King in particular had put themselves on the line to prove that Emily's murder was connected to the murder they'd investigated a few months, finally getting justice for Emily's murder.

"I know, and you helped me with that." She smiled hoping that King knew how much that mattered to her family, and to everyone who had ever known Merri. They had all needed the justice more than Emily had. "I hate that I had to leave the team, I hate that I don't see you all every day." She needed her friends more than she'd care to admit, but this had always been what was best for all of them.

"Merri, we miss you too, but you did what you felt was right and we can still see you all the time. At least, I hope so." He replied, and she felt better knowing the team missed her too, because she couldn't really imagine her life without them, and the last few weeks had been almost hell to her.

"Come in, I have some photos I can show you." She smiled and guided him into her home. Almost the moment she was in the house she knew that this was going to change their relationship, and she wasn't sorry about that.

She pulled out her photo album, and she went through all the photos with King, telling him the stories behind each one of them. The two of them drifting closer together through each one until their lips were barely centimetres apart. At that point Merri couldn't help but close the distance, just like she'd been wanting to do for months.

Following that things had progressed far faster than she'd really expected. Somehow she just hadn't expected Pride to allow things to move along as fast as she was pushing them, but he was just as fast as she was to help the other strip and run up the stairs to her bedroom.

Two hours later Merri was laid in the bed, out of breath and happy with the direction the night had gone. Though it was unexpected, Merri had hoped a little that by leaving NCIS yet staying in New Orleans that this would become a possibility. "That… wasn't really how I expected tonight to end." King smiled, rolling over a little to cover her neck and shoulder in light kisses.

"Me either. It was inevitable though, wasn't it? Now that I'm not one of your agents?" She both liked saying that, and hated saying that. She really just didn't want to think about the fact that it had had to be one or the other. She was happy with this choice really.

"Maybe it was." King smiled and laid back studying her face. Merri was just laid there and her mind had slid back to Emily already. Now she was wondering what her sister would think of the choices Merri had made recently. She somehow felt like until tonight, Emily would have kicked her ass. "You still thinking about Emily?"

"I'm rarely not thinking about her, and I just really miss her." She was going to be honest about that, because in reality missing Emily was a part of the person she was now. That was something that he was going to have to deal with if this continued on. Emily was a big part of her life, and this was how she honoured her.

"We'll work through it, Merri. I promise." King's simple honesty in that promise made her smile, and she was absolutely certain that they would work it out. "I'm not gonna leave you to deal with this alone."

"I know." Merri nodded and ran her fingers over his chest softly, thinking about how he'd always been there when she needed him. "Thank you." She whispered quietly, curling up further into his chest as she spoke. She wasn't really ready to accept that now in less than a year it would be a decade since Emily had died. She knew that it was still going to be hard, continuing to go on without her sister, but with King there to help her she'd be able to do it.


End file.
